House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi released a statement that probably secures passage for a standalone, unfunded payroll tax cut:

“The House Republican leadership plans to bring to the floor a stand-alone payroll tax cut extension bill tomorrow. We have long proposed bringing this tax cut to the floor without payfors and House Democrats will support it so that taxes are not raised on 160 million working Americans, but this should not be a substitute for the work of the Conference Committee.

“We continue to call upon the conferees to resolve the remaining issues — extending unemployment benefits and ensuring seniors can continue to see their doctors under Medicare — by February 17. If the Conference Committee is unable to complete its work on a comprehensive bill by that date, the Republican leadership should cancel the recess and remain in Washington next week. These crucial policies affect millions of middle class families and seniors and must not expire at the end of this month.”

As I understand it, the House GOP may try to pass this on the suspension calendar, which would require a 2/3 vote. With Pelosi’s blessing, I would expect the vast majority of Democrats would provide support, meaning that the bill could get 2/3 even without a majority of Republicans. I’ve heard plenty of Republican grumbling, but not quite enough to occasion a revolt. But we’ll have to see tomorrow.

The real question here is in the Senate. If Democrats can hit upon $50-$60 billion in offsets, they can attach an extension of unemployment insurance and a “doc fix” to the unfunded payroll tax cut bill coming from the House, and then send it back, putting the House in the same precarious position it was in just a couple months ago, on the clock with the payroll tax cut extension on the line. But will Senate Republicans allow their counterparts to be put in that position? They certainly did in December. It probably depends on the pay-fors, and whether Republicans want to extract some policy changes to the unemployment system, like mandating drug testing or a GED as a condition of the benefits.

Under the potential plan, the two-percentage point payroll tax cut would be extended until the end of the year — and the $100 billion cost would be added to the deficit. Unemployment benefits would be extended for the next 10 months, at a cost of $30 billion, and doctors who serve Medicare patients would avoid seeing their payments cut at a cost of $20 billion.

The approximately $50 billion for the so-called “doc fix” and jobless benefits would be offset by cuts to the budget. And sources said the two sides were nearing an agreement to reduce the length of jobless benefits.

The House GOP would like to get below the 79 weeks of unemployment benefits that Obama administration requested. It is likely that agreement will include a series of stages that will begin above 79 weeks, and then drop down below that number, sources said.

So 79 weeks is the high-water mark at this point. We got here because the two-month extension didn’t increase the “look back” for the final, 20-week Extended Benefits tier of unemployment insurance. That meant that many states where the unemployment rate has dropped would soon lose the ability to access that Extended Benefits program. It’s already happened in Michigan, for example, with 30,000 long-term jobless getting cut off.

The major problem in unemployment right now is at the higher end. Millions of people have been out of work for long stretches; the average length of unemployment is something like 42 weeks. By cutting back coverage from 99 weeks to 79 weeks – and potentially more – hundreds of thousands of people in desperate straits will lose their benefits, and it’s unclear that the modestly improving labor market will allow them to get jobs anytime soon.

Senate Democrats have said they want the maximum duration of benefits reduced to 93 weeks — even though legislation that Democrats supported in December has already set in motion a gradual reduction of benefits to 79 weeks over the course of this year.

Schumer suggested Democrats may be willing to compromise on some elements of the unemployment system, but he declined to be specific.

“Obviously there are negotiations going on about what form [unemployment insurance] should take, but I’m not going to get into those details now,” Schumer said. “[Republicans] have all kinds of changes to UI and many of those changes are very unfavorably regarded by our caucus.”

When we’re talking about Obama and the Vichycrats it never is. I’ll be frankly amazed if the “compromise” doesn’t see unemployment fall to a maximum of 52 weeks and require volunteer work slave labor and drug testing to remain eligible.

Oh, ffs. At least Schumer’s trying not to give the store away up front, but how can Obama* not at least TRY to maintain 99 weeks as a starting point? Hell, he should be expanding the UI benefits, if he were any sort of a “democrat” or a “populist”.

*-I know he’s not anything of the sort and his “caving” doesn’t surprise in the least. My “anger” is a rhetorical device, basically. Just a way of hiding my disgust.

“The House Republican leadership plans to bring to the floor a stand-alone payroll tax cut extension bill tomorrow. We have long proposed bringing this tax cut to the floor without payfors and House Democrats will support it so that taxes are not raised on 160 million working Americans…”

There goes Nancy Pelosi pushing the conservative line on temporary tax cuts where if a temp tax cut is about to expire it therefore means it is a tax increase. I expect Republicans will use the same justifications for extending the Bush Tax Cuts without payfors and we’ll yet again end up with a detrimental ‘grand bargain’ from Obama.

People leaving the labor force was the 12/2 report story – it was not the January or February story, although the percent of the population that has a job has not improved from 12/2′s 58.5 percent of the Civilian non-institutional population (Table A1 in the monthly stats).

It would be nice to get back to Bill Clinton’s 64.4%, but some folks really do not want Hillary –

and Bush with his massive tax cuts for the rich and no regulation produced a straight line decrease to around 61-62% with 154236000 employed when he left office and 750000 a month dropping from the employed count each month, and Obama has us back to 154395000 employed – but with a larger population.

At least the bleeding has stopped – we are gaining jobs rather than losing 750,000 a month.

“So a payroll tax cut doesn’t boost demand, or create jobs after all?
I’m glad cathy has seen the light.”

Usually I understand your point – here I do not. The payroll tax cut is a small effect but it returns somewhere between 2 and 3 dollars of GDP for every 1 dollar of lost taxes, in contrast to the 30 cents of extra GDP we get for every 1 dollar of tax cuts to those making more than 100,000 a year.

The 2 percentage-point cut in the Social Security payroll tax would be extended through the end of the year, with the nearly $100 billion cost added to the deficit. Jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed would be renewed as well, with the $30 billion or so cost paid for in part through auctioning broadcast spectrum to wireless companies and requiring federal workers to contribute more toward their pensions.

Jobless workers would be eligible to receive unemployment benefits to a maximum of 63 weeks in most states. People in states with very high unemployment rates would be eligible additional weeks.

Drop by the GOP were demands for:

1. low-income workers claiming a refundable child tax credit be required to have a Social Security number so as to chase , illegal immigrants, after it was pointed out that without SS numbers were still US citizens.

2. for unemployed people to enroll in GED classes to obtain benefits, and for states to employ drug tests as a condition of receiving unemployment benefits/

Agreed to by the Democrats were the GOP demand that jobless people be more diligent in job searches as a condition of receiving benefits.

The welfare for the rich in paying 1/3rd extra to their companies so via contracting we can lower Fed employment head count, or the unneeded contracts for the weapons made by the companies of the rich, or the more directly the tax code that defers the tax that it doesn’t ignore. or the treating of rich person income as less taxable than manual labor income via tax breaks for investment income, or is the welfare you refer to the lower top marginal rate that does not reflect the fact almost all of gov in terms of dollars is for the rich – the protection of their assets here and abroad and the provisioning of their enterprises with the infrastructure that they need.